The degrading role John Wayne admitted was a mistake: “The most ludicrous thing I’ve ever seen”
Anyone who knows anything about John Wayne knows that he was as protective of his onscreen persona as any actor has ever been, and he turned down countless roles because he was adamant that the audience who’d been raised on his filmography didn’t want to see him rock the boat too much.
It was an admirable adherence to formula, even if it robbed the world of seeing ‘The Duke’ in films like Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove and Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, which could have potentially served as the springboard toward reinvention, especially when ‘New Hollywood’ left him feeling like a man out of time.
John Wayne only wanted to make John Wayne movies, though, apart from the time he made a Clint Eastwood movie. The industry icon admitted that the only reason he starred in McQ was that he’d turned down the lead role in Dirty Harry, and his efforts at playing a rogue police officer were sorely lacking compared to the character he’d previously rejected.
‘The Duke’ had a very specific set of rules regarding the pictures he would and wouldn’t make, but toward the end of his life, he was running low on funds. He’d been divorced twice, was separated from his third wife, fathered seven children, and incurred what must have been astronomical medical bills for his ongoing battles with cancer, all of which cost a pretty penny.
In his mind, the solution to not betraying his big-screen ethos while still keeping the money rolling in was simple; he signed an annual contract worth $200,000 per year with the pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers to advertise the pain relief medicine, Datril 500, in a series of TV commercials. It was a well-paying gig, but when the backlash began, Wayne quickly soured on shilling pills to his adoring fans.
“Over the next couple of years, he’d receive hundreds of letters about those commercials,” his long-time secretary and companion, Pat Stacy, revealed. “People writing in from all over to express disappointment, to wonder why he’d ‘lowered himself’ to become a television salesman. Duke’s answer to them all was terse and truthful: ‘I did it for the M-U-N-Y. But I guess I made a mistake. I’ll just have to find another way.'”
The ads were so reviled that even Marlene Dietrich, Wayne’s one-time flame, felt compelled to burn them at the stake. “You can’t be King Lear and selling some kind of product a minute later,” she offered. “I think it’s the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever seen. A ‘he-man of the great outdoors’ on horseback with his hat and all the other trappings of a real cowboy on, praising the effect of a headache tablet. Too funny for words.”
His protective approach to his mythos would eventually rear its head, and ‘The Duke’ ended up convincing Bristol-Myers to cancel his contract after a year. How did he keep the cash rolling in? He pivoted to banking and started fronting adverts for Great Western Savings instead, which weren’t quite as widely despised by the legions who’d grown up with Wayne as their hero.
In fact, his presence made a noticeable impact on the American financial system, with the branches reporting that over $20 million had been added to newly created savings accounts after the ‘Golden Age’ favourite endorsed the outfit. Hawking headache pills? No dice. Convincing people to switch banks? No problem.
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